App development and design trends that will mark 2018

Jaydip Dobariya

12 months ago

According to one survey, at this very moment, there are over 2.6 billion smartphone subscribers all over the world. Furthermore, by 2020 the number of users might rise to 6.1 billion which is more than the entire world population in 1999.

Apart from this, in 2015, Google officially announced that there are more people browsing the internet through their mobile devices than by any other mean. Then, in April 2017, the number of people using Android to browse the internet became larger than the number of people using Windows for this task. Needless to say, this marked an end of an era and a start of a new one.

Finally, according to 2015 statistic, about 85 percent of all time people spend on their smartphones (which is about 5 hours per day on average) is on apps. These few staggering figures are, on their own, more than enough to explain why an app development industry is currently on such a stellar rise, which makes it into an incredibly lucrative career opportunity. With this in mind, here are several trends that are expected to boom in 2018.

Internet of things (IoT)

The notion of the Internet of Things rests on the idea that the line between the real world and the digital one will get very blurry in the next following several years.This is not at all surprising, seeing as how the use of apps to access data regarding your everyday life and control your home seem to be something that everyone needs.

Currently, we are seeing more and more smart homes, smart thermostats and smart lighting systems. Therefore, those who plan to try their hand in app development in 2018 might want to start thinking in this direction.

The rise of m-commerce

One of the reasons why teens have forsaken the idea of wrist-watches is the fact that post-millennials don’t see the point in owning single-purpose items. Incidentally, this is another thing that allowed smartphones to become such an irreplaceable part of our lives. With a smartphone in your pocket, you don’t need a watch, a calculator, a camera or even a thermometer.

All of this made some people start speculating on when the m-commerce will become so strong that we will be able to leave our wallets at home, as well. Recent stats claim that 62 percent of all users made at least a single purchase in the past 6 years, however, this is still restricted to e-commerce.

Faced with such a purchasing power of this trends, more and more traditional retailers are enabling their customers to pay via their phones in actual stores, which makes it into another trend that is expected to further expand in 2018.

Accelerated mobile pages

According to one statistic, an average internet user expects your website to load within the first 2 seconds. Failure to do so may, therefore, result in a massive boost in your bounce rate. Most experts agree that the most important factor for the overall customer experience (CX) is building a responsive web design.

The simplest way to achieve this on mobile devices is with the use of trend called accelerated mobile pages. Apart from increasing the number of visitors and reducing the number of migration efforts, this trend can also provide one’s app or website with a significantly higher CTR (click-through-rate).

AR and VR apps

The next thing that needs to be discussed is the issue of AR apps. In 2016, the world stood in awe when millions of people all over the globe started chasing Pokémon in parks and other public places. While it is true that this particular trend didn’t catch on, it still changed the landscape of the app development world as we know it.

Another perfect example of this trend can be seen through Snapchat, which compelled Instagram and Facebook to introduce filters, as well. In other words, the world simply appears more colorful through the screen of a smartphone.

Another thing that is important to notice is that although 2016 was considered to be a huge year for the VR this mostly restricted for PCs and consoles. Of course, there were numerous efforts in the past to bring VR into the spotlight and some devices like The Google Daydream View Credit, Samsung Gear VR Credit or even the low-cost Google’s Cardboard headset have done a pretty decent job.

Still, the key to the flourishment of this industry will not be found in device advancements but in app development. Same as with AR, the world of mobile VR is just waiting for the right app set. This is something we might see in 2018.

A steady migration to cloud

One of the most interesting things about mobile cloud traffic is that it steadily increases at the rate of about 2 percent each year. By the year 2019, it is expected to reach 90 percent, which would mean that 9 out of 10 of all apps with have at least some cloud-based functions to them.

Advantages that this trend brings are numerous, including a handier way of data storage and global accessibility from different terminals. Unfortunately, there are still some concerns regarding the overall safety of cloud, although, most of the previously problematic issues have already been resolved.

At the end of the day, these five trends are just the tip of the iceberg of new ideas that might come to rule the web app development industry. Honorable mentions, of course, go to notions of artificial intelligence, chatbots and machine learning.

Keep in mind, however, that these are only speculations we are making based on the current state of affairs. The only way to tell for sure what the landscape of app development will look like in 2018 is to wait and see.